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Hi, I'm currently in graduate school in biomedical sciences and planning to apply to law school this fall. I have a question regarding my letter of recommendation. One will come from my current mentor, but, for the second letter, I wasn't sure if it is better to ask an undergraduate pre-law professor whose class I took 5 years ago, or another faculty from my current department.
I got to know the undergraduate professor fairly well but I haven't kept in touch with him.
Any advice would be helpful. Thanks.

hazelnutpark wrote:Hi, I'm currently in graduate school in biomedical sciences and planning to apply to law school this fall. I have a question regarding my letter of recommendation. One will come from my current mentor, but, for the second letter, I wasn't sure if it is better to ask an undergraduate pre-law professor whose class I took 5 years ago, or another faculty from my current department.
I got to know the undergraduate professor fairly well but I haven't kept in touch with him.
Any advice would be helpful. Thanks.

I would select the professor that can best speak to your specific academic capabilities, in relation to other students and in general, which I imagine will be someone from your graduate school. It is not as importnat to have a UG LOR if you are far removed and have another more appropriate academic reference.

JenDarby wrote:

hazelnutpark wrote:Hi, I'm currently in graduate school in biomedical sciences and planning to apply to law school this fall. I have a question regarding my letter of recommendation. One will come from my current mentor, but, for the second letter, I wasn't sure if it is better to ask an undergraduate pre-law professor whose class I took 5 years ago, or another faculty from my current department.
I got to know the undergraduate professor fairly well but I haven't kept in touch with him.
Any advice would be helpful. Thanks.

I would select the professor that can best speak to your specific academic capabilities, in relation to other students and in general, which I imagine will be someone from your graduate school. It is not as importnat to have a UG LOR if you are far removed and have another more appropriate academic reference.

this. Choose whoever knows you better. It shows

So, related question. Say you've been out of UG for a few years and a UG LOR is out of the question. Let's further say that you could get three work-related LORs and two graduate school-related LORs. What combination is best? The consensus seems to be that three is the best number overall, but should it be 1 work, 2 grad school or 2 work, 1 grad school? Would submitting four still be bad? I'd still have the fifth for a LOCI.

ETA: Not to get too complicated, but consider the three work-related LORs as for different jobs.

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I would only submit 3 (I submitted 2 to every school) and save 1 in case you get waitlisted and want to provide extra materials at that point.

As far as whether you should submit 2 grad school or 2 work LORs largely depends on the quality of each. I would lean towards two academic LORs personally, but I would place the biggest weight on which provided the most personal and comparative acknowledgment of your abilities and propensity to succeed in LS.

Thanks for the advice! Good to know that I'm not SOL for academic letters.

Why is it that four is not recommended though? If I can submit four and still have one left over, why would that be a bad idea? 2 work and 2 academic seems like a good balance for someone with four years of WE and four years of total school.

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Samara wrote:Thanks for the advice! Good to know that I'm not SOL for academic letters.

Why is it that four is not recommended though? If I can submit four and still have one left over, why would that be a bad idea? 2 work and 2 academic seems like a good balance for someone with four years of WE and four years of total school.

I didn't mean to imply it's not recommended. To me it just seems like 4 might be a bit over kill. I would want to select the best ones rather than drown the admissions committees in letters of personal praise since they do have quite a few apps and LORs to review.

(I don't purport to be an authority on LORs as I didn't even have the consideration of submitting 4 valuable ones.)

acrossthelake wrote:

Samara wrote:Thanks for the advice! Good to know that I'm not SOL for academic letters.

Why is it that four is not recommended though? If I can submit four and still have one left over, why would that be a bad idea? 2 work and 2 academic seems like a good balance for someone with four years of WE and four years of total school.

They don't want to read even more and at some point, it's sort of redundant. I know if I were an admissions officer I'd be annoyed.

Hmm...okay. ITT: a splitter is sad that one area of success in life can't be capitalized on more. It's too bad I can't let them know they're there if they want to read them without submitting them. Like give them the choice if they want the extra ones. I mean, why would they say you can submit four if four would be annoying? Ugh, this whole process is so unnecessarily opaque. At least I have TLS.

I'll be submitting exactly zero academic LORs with my apps, so we'll see what effect that has. I'm not too worried.

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